Modern Art

Ashcan School, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art

Modern Art

• Defining modernism: modern refers to a period dating roughly from the 1860s through 1970 . Modernism was not one movement, but rather a multiplicity of ‘isms’.

• We are focusing on works post 1900.

Modernism is

• a desire to break away from impressionist art.• ditching the old rules of perspective, color, and

composition in order to work out their own visions. • reinforced by scientific discoveries that there is a whole

world behind things. • ‘Reality’-whatever that was- became a far more

abstract concept than it had been a generation earlier. • abandons intellect for intuition and depicts the world as

they perceived it behind the veils of physical appearance.

The Armory Show

• The event that was truly a catalyst for the growth of American Modernism was the Armory Show of 1913 in New York. This landmark event presented nearly 1,300 works representing 300 artists, about two thirds Americans, covering styles ranging from Ashcan to French Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist. More than 75,000 people attended, and an entire generation of artists, collectors and critics were given a glimpse of the future.

The Ashcan School 1908-1918"Apostles of Ugliness"

• “Art for life’s sake" the Ash Can school shocked audiences with their depictions of the streets and city life.

• Best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods.

• The movement is most associated with a group known as The Eight, whose members included five painters associated with the Ashcan school.

The “Eight”

Robert Henri, Snow in New York, 1902

John Sloan The Six O'clock Train

Robert HenriChild

Robert HenriGirl

George Bellows New York

John SloanPigeons

Everett Shin, Cross Streets of New York, 1899

George Bellows,Dempsey and Firpo

Stag at Sharkey’s -1909

Cliff Dwellers, 1913

McSorley's Bar1912

Regionalism1930-1935

• Regionalism: Artists who shunned city life, and technological advances, to create scenes of rural life.

• Regionalist style is best-known through the so-called "Regionalist Triumvirate" of Grant Wood in Iowa, Thomas Hart Benton in Missouri, and John Steuart Curry in Kansas.

• During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Regionalist art was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland.

The Top Dog of Regionalism Thomas Hart Benton

• There is a certain irony in the fact that Regionalism, which was promoted as the very expression of American democracy, was the kissing cousin of both the official art of 1930s Russia and that of 1930s Germany

Boomtown-1928

Wreck of the ole 97 Train-1943

The Social History of Missouri

The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley-1934

The Hailstorm-1940

Grant Wood

American Gothic, 1930

Parodies

The Real Deal

Stone City, 1930

The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa

Iowa Cornfield

Andrew Wyeth, 2007

Wyeth Quotes

• You think you're developing and getting better and then you see something you did years ago. Looking at your early work.. sometimes it has a depth that surprises you.

• Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing.. then a work of art may happen.

Christina’s World

• With water color, you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound of snow shifting through the trees or over the ice of a small pond or against a windowpane. Water color perfectly expresses the free side of my nature." - Andrew Wyeth

The Master Bedroom

• I've never studied the Japanese. That's something that must have crept in there. But the Japanese are my biggest clients. They seem to like the elemental quality.

Wind From the Sea

Abstract ExpressionismPost WW II

• Abstract expressionism: originated in New York in the 1940s and 1950s and aimed at subjective emotional expression with particular emphasis on the creative spontaneous act (e.g., action painting).

• The emphasis is on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. What does it feel like.

• New York replaced Paris as the center of the artistic world.

Jackson Pollock“You don’t look at a rose and ask what it means”

Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950

Lavender Mist

• It looks like an aerial photograph of a city, but it is a city that has somehow been blasted . . . It also looks like astronomical photographs of nebulae and galaxies . . . while at the same time close up details of this and other paintings resemble microscopic photos of molecular structures.

Jackson Pollock

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ

Summertime

Autumn Rhythm Number 1, 1950

Full Fathom Five, 1947

Eyes in the Heat, 1946"This is not art--it's a joke in bad taste." --Reynolds News headline, 1959

Georgia O’Keefe

Radiator Building, Night, New York

1926 - Yellow Calla

1930 - White Camelia

1927 - Red Poppy

1931 - Red, White, and Blue

1929 - Black Cross, New Mexico

1965 - Sky Above Clouds IV

Edward Hopper'The man's the work. Something doesn't come out of nothing.'

Nighthawks

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axpYTyXU3-g

Automat

New York Movie 1939

Rooms By the Sea

Pop Art

• "The term first appeared in Britain during the 1950s and referred to the interest of a number of artists in the images of mass media, advertising, comics and consumer products.

• Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art.

The Big Guns of Pop Art

Andy Warhol Roy Lichtenstein

Andy WarholTurquoise Marilyn 1962

Mickey Mouse 1981

Campbell's Soup Can 1964

Whaam! 1963

Roy LichtensteinDrowning Girl 1963